[14] Among the Veddahs the fact that the avoidance begins after puberty, and in each case in relation to the opposite sex, is evidence that here the sexual feelings are concerned.
[15] Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 291.
[16] E. B. Tylor. On a method of investigating the development of institutions: applied to laws of marriage and descent. J. A. I. 1889, xviii. No. 3, 245-269.
[17] The matter here is highly technical, and must be compared, if it is to be understood, with Mr. Tylor's essay, cited in the previous note. W stands for Wife, H for Husband, D is Daughter, F is Female, M is Mother, and is also Male! A is Avoidance.—A. L.
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE CLASSIFICATORY SYSTEM
The classificatory system.—The author's theory is the opposite of Mr. Morgan's, of original brother and sister marriage.—That theory is based on Malayan terms of relationship.—Nephew, niece, and cousin, all named 'sons and daughters.'—This fact of nomenclature used as an argument for promiscuity.—The author's theory.—The names for relationship given as regards the group, not the individual.—The names and rules evolved in the respective interests of three generations.—They apply to food as well as to marriage.—Each generation is a strictly defined class.—Terms for relationship indicate, not kinship, but relative seniority and rights in relation to the group.—The distinction of age in generations breaks down in practice.—Methods of bilking the letter of the law.—Communal marriage.—Outside suitors and cousinage. —The fact of cousinage unperceived and unnamed.—Cousins are still called brothers and sisters; thus, when a man styles his sister's son his son, the fact does not prove, as in Mr. Morgan's theory, that his sister is his wife.—Terms of address between brothers and sisters.—And between members of the same and of different phratries.—These corroborate the author's theory.—Distinction as to sexual rights yields the classificatory system.—Progress outran recognition and verbal expression.—Errors of Mr. Morgan and Mr. McLennan.—Conclusion.—Note.—' 'Group marriage.'
In the gradual evolution of the group into the tribe during the long period of transition, the modifications in the internal organisation, which took place as the necessary result in the march in progress, should have left traces which we may also be able to follow in living custom. The immigration of the outside suitor, in its synchronism with the decay of paternal incest, must have entailed continual complications demanding regulation, and the resolution of each problem would lead to an almost mechanical step in advance. When by force of circumstances of environment or others such a step became retrograde, then we may expect an aberrant form whose very anomalism should lead to a facile recognition, and prove equally fertile in interpretation. Indeed, a curious vestige of the effect in action of the habit of incest, when brought into inevitable contact with progressive social evolution, is to be discerned in the nomenclature of that earliest phase of the classificatory system which Mr. L. H. Morgan has called the Malayan. From the general prevalence among lower races of a division into classes by generations of the members of group, and the deduction we see drawn in Ancient Society from the Hawaiian terms of relationship therein detailed, as to a previous state of general promiscuity, it will be desirable thoroughly to examine the whole question of the so-called classificatory system. It is doubly imperative in view of our own hypothesis, which, as regards the primary origin of society, may be said to be exactly the reverse of that of Mr. Morgan, in as far as the sexual inter-relations of brother and sister are concerned.